


Home Where You Find It

by fangirl_squee



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, i know that time is probably too long for this to be "realistic" but like just go with me here, sort of spoilers for pzn ep 18, very general spoilers for C/w
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24249628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirl_squee/pseuds/fangirl_squee
Summary: An Apostalisian crash lands on the distant planet of Slighter, worn out from endless battles and tired of war, and makes a home for themselves. Time is long, history repeats.
Kudos: 22





	Home Where You Find It

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this wonderful art by elliot lee on twitter](https://twitter.com/mixxavii/status/1256983368073428993) and also [this meme](https://twitter.com/trestletables/status/1258148443446370304).

_ Okay… Okay, so [clears throat] I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get this message out to you, or if you’ll even care if you  _ do _ get it, but I… I mean, you know my reasons. We were made for war, but I was never really… it never sat well with me, and I- well. Surely by now word has reached you about all that. [a sigh] I just couldn’t do it Cass, building a weapon like that as a-a-a- technical feat is one thing, but giving it to the military to use, and they would have used it, you can’t tell me they wouldn’t have and I- [another sigh] Well. Choices. You make the best with what you can, I guess. Speaking of… I had sort of a rocky landing, so even if I  _ wanted _ to rejoin the fight, I’m not getting out of here any time soon. [a pause] Seems like fate has chosen my final destination for me. [another, much longer pause] Good luck out there Cass. May the war… I hope you don’t have to go to such lengths to escape it. _

  
  
  


The ship rattled around her, and Millie held the steering controls with a white-knuckled grip. The small craft hadn’t been exactly in the best shape when she’d got it from Broun, and the trip through the gate hadn’t helped things. She’d held out as long as she could before getting out of the gate’s guided path, trying to put as much space between her and Partizan as possible. She’d done it too - she didn’t recognise any of the constellations around her, a fact which she was choosing to think of as a positive sign and not a deeply panic-inducing one.

There was the sharp grinding noise of metal on metal from somewhere towards the back of the craft, and Millie looked down at the navigation panel, searching for somewhere, anywhere. Any landing spot was better than drifting forever in unfamiliar space.

There was a planet, small and green as it came into view through the cockpit’s window. Millie pressed the ship forward, trying to urge it just a little closer, just a little closer-

The ship shook as it entered the planet’s gravitational field, pieces of the hull rattling as some of the pieces broke off. She caught sight of the forest she was about to crash land into for just a moment, the sea of green before her oddly peaceful before the ship dipped below the tree-line, slamming into the trees and sending Millie crashing into the roof.

She blinked awake slowly, carefully sitting up and looking herself over. There was a gash on her arm and more than a few bruises, but nothing broken. She’d certainly had worse.

Millie eased herself up, picking her way through the broken craft to find the ship’s meagre medical kit to clean and bandage the wound on her arm before she pushed her way outside, blinking at the bright light.

Outside, it was cool and damp, a light drizzle of rain catching on her eyelashes as she walked around her ship to inspect the damage. There was a lot of it - it had barely been spaceworthy when she got it. Now it was more of a pile of metal scraps than anything else, her mech poking out of a hole in the side of the ship.

Millie huffed a breath. No need to panic just yet. She had some supplies, and surely on a plant like this there had to be  _ some _ one, even if it was just a distant trading post. She could easily barter her way off planet.

She carefully made her way back into the ship, gathering what she could find and taking stock. Her mech probably wasn’t up to withstanding any fights but it could at least move without collapsing. She had provisions for a few weeks, about a quarter of what should have rightly been in the first aid kit, and some of the clothes she’d managed to steal from Clem before she left. She packed them up as securely she could, hiding them before she set out to look for any sign of something other than trees, marking them as she went.

After walking for what felt like hours up a hill, she came to the ridge of a valley. From there, she could see the land stretching out in front of her, more greenery than she’d ever seen, the trees tall and old and undisturbed by anything in their long lives. Millie swallowed roughly.

Her eyes caught on a spot towards the side of the valley - a small gap in the trees, which had to be man-made, and a structure of some kind. Millie looked up, trying to judge how many hours of sunlight were left. If the day cycle here was like it was on Partizan, she would only have time to reach the clearing before dark. She didn’t want to be making her way back to her ship at night, probably getting herself lost in the unfamiliar forest.

She returned to her ship, going slowly on the slippery ground. The sun was setting as she reached it, and she wrapped herself in Clem’s thick fur coats as she tried to get some rest.

The night seemed to pass quickly, her body stiff as she began to make the climb back up towards where she’d seen the structure. The clearing was still there, the only sign of disturbance in the thick forest. Millie headed towards it, marking trees as she went.

She paused on the edge of the clearing, watching the small house for any kind of movement. There were no lights in the windows, and Millie slowly stepped closer, taking note of the signs of disrepair, where the little front garden had been trampled by animals, where a storm had blown through and peeled back the roof.

Millie frowned, looking up at it. Now that she was closer, it didn’t look like a house at all. Or, it sort of did, but it also looked like a ship, if a very old-fashioned one. There were words etched into the metal doorframe and Millie traced a finger over them.  _ The Callisto _ .

There were other words carved into the frame. Some were old Apostalisian but most she didn’t recognise, a strange sharp script that seemed to shift in the light. She shook herself. There were things that were much more dangerous than old Apostalisian ghost stories.

Inside, the place was just as abandoned as it appeared, the rich paint peeling from the inside of the ship’s walls and furniture long-since worn into crumbling. She poked around the cupboards, peering at the old, strangely-delicate looking cups inside. Millie reached out, brushing the dust off one with her thumb to reveal the bright green-blue crest. Apostalisian, and one that seemed sort of familiar, but she couldn’t place it. It wasn’t as though anyone had ever actually needed her to know her history, after all.

She moved on, carrying the small cup with her as she went, peering at the faded designs around the doorways and the rusted metal of the ship. The cockpit was right at the back, dark despite the many windows that had been made in the rest of the ship from where that section of the ship was wedged into the dirt. 

Millie trailed a finger along the dusty control panel. This was where their ship must have come down, and whoever it was had just decided to make the best of it. She laughed. Not a bad idea. Her fingers brushed over the buttons of the controls as she thought, letting out a long breath.

The control panel beneath her hands  _ beeped _ into life Millie jumped back, watching as the small screen set into the control panel scrolled through lines of text, too fast for her to read before it settled on a single word. Millie frowned, mouthing the word as she read it, the old-style Apostalisan feeling strange on her tongue.

_ ~Playback? _

_ Y / N _

Millie looked over her shoulder. She could see straight through to the outside, where the trees waved faintly in the breeze. There was no one around, and if she set off some kind of security protocol, the metal of the ship was so rusted that she felt pretty confident she could kick her way out.

_ Y _

_ ~Playback Corrupted In Files 007392 - 008186 _

_ ~View File Fragments _

_ Y / N _

_ Y _

The screen went static for a moment before a tired Apostalisian face came into view. They had a cut on their forehead, the ship behind them looking as wrecked as they were.

“Stardate, uh, something. The computer will figure it out, I don’t think I need to say it. Anyway, let the historical record show that I’m still alive despite everyone’s best efforts, including, some would say, my own.” They laughed, their face growing more serious as they looked around them. “I… if you’re seeing this, it’s probably because they’ve caught me, or I died, so, uh.” They let out a breath. “Wow, that sucks. Anyway, what I mean is that-”

The video cut off into static, their voice warping until the screen settled. They looked different now, the cut on their head had healed to a shiny scar, the area around it still pink and tender. They grinned tiredly at the camera.

“Date whatever, like a week since last time. I managed to find someone to trade me some actual seeds for some of the royal garbage, which maybe will come back to bite me  _ but _ it means I’m actually going to be able to grow my own food, which- I mean, how hard can it be, people do it all over the system. I’m a scientist, surely I can figure it out right?” They paused. “I mean, they say there’s a big library in the settlement here. Maybe I should-”

Static. Millie tapped at the screen. Their appearance had changed again, the scar healed to a thin line of their forehead now and their clothing a little more ragged. Unlike the previous two clips, they were leaning back in the chair, their shoulders relaxed as they spoke.

“-keep the seeds in here, since the dirt seems to be helping climate-control. They say everything will dry out as we get to summer. It’s funny, between the seeds and figuring out where to plant what and when, I’m busier now even than when I was in the Branch-”

_ ~Playback Corrupted _

_ ~File Unavailable For Viewing _

Millie sighed. It figured. Although, at least she’d been able to find out a few things - there was a settlement somewhere on the planet, and that whoever was in the vids might have left something worth trading.

She searched through the craft. Stairs led down to an ancient-looking bedchamber, the hanging fabric around the bedframe crumbling into dust in her hand as she touched it. It was as odd a mix of things as anywhere else in the craft, the curling metal of an ornate dressing table next to a roughly made wooden chair. The furniture in the bedroom seemed a little more stable than those on the ground floor, probably the result of being better protected from the elements, and Millie mentally filed that thought away for later. Maybe she could store things in here.

She climbed back up the stairs to explore the rest of the ship. The shape of it was strangely un-aerodynamic, and it took her a while to figure out why - the sides of the craft had been removed completely, the metal of the hull repurposed to widen the space into rooms. They’d turned their crashed ship into a metal cottage. Whoever had crashed here, they must have been here a very long time.

Millie turned that thought over on the walk back to her own ship. In comparison, her own craft seemed tiny, the cold unfriendly metal amplifying the sounds of the forest around her at night. Spending more time in it didn’t sound particularly appealing, especially when she knew of another structure close by that she could use.

The first night in the ship-cottage was equally terrible. The roof leaked in the rain, and the wind howled through the broken windows, making the old metal hull creak and groan. Mille glared at the roof, planning. She’d come too far to let herself be kept awake by something as mundane as a bump in the night.

Still. She didn’t  _ love _ being kept awake, and it wasn’t as though she had much else to do. She fired up the Stray Dog, using the power of the mech to lift her broken ship, piece by piece, down into the valley. It was easy enough to break it down the rest of the way, using the metal scraps to patch holes and repair windows.

There was an old generator at the back of the house, as half-rusted as anything else in the cottage. Millie looked it over, considering her mech for a long moment before she guided it down behind the cottage, crawling up to where she could pry it open to reach its power cells. Under her hands the generator spluttered to life, the lights inside the cottage flickering on, filling the home with golden light.

She spent most of the next few days slowly clearing out the cupboards and hidden cabinets of the cottage. There were what felt like a thousand little mementos, figurines and crumbling paper, ornate bottles stained with their long-dried contents, and a series of tall metal canisters that were difficult to open but contained, to Millie’s surprise, seeds. She ran her hand through them, thinking. She had no way of knowing what they were, whatever marking had been on the canister had long since faded.

There was one way to find out though. Millie eyed the garden outside, tangled and overgrown. She wrestled with it the next day, crawling into bed dirty and exhausted and waking the same way.

There were a few more vid entries, from which Millie was able to gather that the planet had a reliable spring cycle and that regardless of which seeds she had, planting them now would probably work.

She still didn’t know who the person in the vids was. Whatever personal records they’d had had either been destroyed by the passing of time or taken with them when they’d left, but there were a few hints. The royal seals left on things, so she knew they’d been important. They way they dictated some of the journal entries almost as letters to a younger sibling, so they’d had family. The way they grinned when they talked about someone they’d met on the planet, so she knew they’d been in love. Mostly what she knew for sure was that they seemed happier as the vids went on, as the new home around them took shape.

It was a feeling Millie could understand. Slowly the garden bent to her will, as much as it ever would, weeds growing around the patches she’d cleared for the new plants. There were even some flowers growing along one side of the house, and untangling them from the weeds helped her to discover two water tanks.

This time, Millie didn’t pause before she took parts from her mech. Between having a hot water system and having a battle-ready mech, the decision was incredibly easy.

The days stretched on. She ventured into the forest, bringing back the small bird-like creatures she’d been able to hunt, wood for her fire, fresh water from a nearby stream. She repaired the furniture in the bedchamber of the ship, dragging her old bedding down into the curled metal frame.

The weather grew warmer and, as it did so, green shoots began to grow where her seeds had been. Millie studied them, delighted, as she rested in the warm sun. They curled upwards slowly, becoming more recognisable by the day.

“Hello there!” called a voice.

Millie jumped, her hand going to the spot where her pistol hadn’t been for a long time, looking for the source of the sound. There was a person, an older human in a blue robe, waving to her as they approached, their gait slow and easy.

“Didn’t know anyone was out this far,” they said.

Millie smiled, forcing herself to keep her shoulder loose. “What brings you out this way?”

“Heading down to the marketplace,” they said, gesturing towards the horizon, “Almost spring time, you know. Lots of good deals to be made of a spring time, start the year off fresh with a good deal or two, that’s what I say.”

“Yeah,” said Millie slowly, “A Good deal and a fresh start.”

They laughed. “That’s the attitude I like!”

They shook her hand before they left. Millie’s eyes caught on the gash in her arm, the wound healed to a thin pink line, barely noticeable against her scales.

She smiled, turning back to the warm soil of her garden. There was still much of the day left, and she had work to do.

  
  
  


_ You know, every day I wake up and I work the little field, get fresh water, maybe check some of the traps I’ve set up and see if I’ve caught anything for dinner, and it’s… I don’t know how to describe it Cass. There’s just nothing but me and the trees and the ground under my feet. The war’s above me still, somewhere, but it feels as far away as… I don’t know. As our parents. Further, even. [a deep breath] I hope, somewhere, you get to have this, that you get to go to bed with dirt under your nails, that you get to wake up and see all the flowers that have bloomed overnight. I hope someday, I can see you again, and show you this place, a world away from our world, and we can sit in the garden in the sun, the war far enough above us both that we can’t see it at all. [a long pause] Someday, maybe. Someday. _

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi: mariusperkins on most places


End file.
